It started as a chain of psychiatric hospitals in Georgia. Fifty-plus years later, Magellan Health decides how millions of Americans get their mental health care approved - and after a $2.2 billion round trip through Centene, it is about to be on its own again.
The insurance card is only the front door. Behind it sits a $274.9 billion machine spanning pharmacy benefits, specialty medicine, behavioral care and digital health - built to make a fragmented system behave more like one business.
Klarify is an AI agent for therapists that automates the administrative, operational, and financial work surrounding mental-health care - clinical notes, treatment plans, insurance claims, clinical letters, between-session resources, and client acquisition - so clinicians can spend more time in session and less on paperwork. Founded in 2024 by Moody Abdul and Alexander Bergholm and backed by Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch, it is used by thousands of therapists across five countries.
Perspectives Health builds AI agents that take on the paperwork behind behavioral health care. Its software reviews patient charts every night, flags documentation that would trigger an insurance denial, writes clinical notes, and assembles utilization-review packets - so addiction and mental health programs get paid and clinicians spend less time on forms. Founded in 2024 and backed by Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch, the company reports piloting across a dozen-plus clinics and reaching $250K in committed ARR within four weeks of launch.
Sohar Health is an API-first platform that automates insurance eligibility checks and verification of benefits (VoB) for behavioral and digital health providers. Founded in 2023 by physician Ashish Mandavia and engineer Lucas Gordon, the company turns a slow, error-prone front-office task into a real-time API call - returning most checks in seconds with high accuracy - so clinics can confirm coverage, cut claim denials, and get paid faster. It graduated from Y Combinator (S23) and raised $3.8M in seed funding led by Kindred Capital in 2025.
Camber is a New York-based healthtech company building AI-driven revenue cycle management (RCM) software for specialty care practices. Formerly known as Juniper, it automates medical claims processing, denial prevention, and payment reconciliation for ABA therapy, physical therapy, ENT and allergy, and other high-recurring care specialties. Trained on more than $2.5 billion in claims data, Camber helps providers reach roughly 95% first-pass paid rates and get reimbursed faster, replacing the manual, call-center-heavy processes of traditional billing firms.
Headway is a New York-based healthtech company building a software-enabled network that makes it easier to find a therapist and to pay for one with insurance. Its three-sided marketplace connects patients, mental health clinicians, and insurance plans: patients search for in-network providers with transparent copays, clinicians offload credentialing, billing, scheduling, and claims to Headway, and insurers gain a larger accessible network. Founded in 2019 by Andrew Adams and co-founders, Headway operates in all 50 states with roughly 34,000 clinicians and, after a $100M Series D in 2024, is valued at about $2.3 billion.
Iris Telehealth is an Austin, Texas-based telepsychiatry company that partners with hospitals, health systems, community mental health centers, and federally qualified health centers to deliver virtual behavioral health care. Founded in 2013 on the belief that every community deserves timely access to quality mental health care, Iris supplies vetted psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and licensed therapists on both scheduled and on-demand bases, plus an AI-enabled analytics platform. It is the only virtual mental health company to earn The Joint Commission's behavioral health care accreditation twice, and it works with roughly 200 partner organizations across the United States.
Mantra Health is a New York-based digital mental health company that partners with colleges and universities to give students access to a full spectrum of care - from self-guided wellness content and coaching to therapy, psychiatry, and 24/7 crisis support. Its 'Whole Campus Care' model integrates with existing campus counseling centers to close gaps in access, reduce wait times, and help students stay enrolled and succeed.
Marigold Health is a Boston-based digital behavioral health company that combines certified peer recovery coaches with a 24/7 anonymous, text-based support community. Natural language processing scans member conversations to flag emerging needs and route human support where it matters most, helping people with mental health and substance use conditions stay engaged in recovery. Marigold contracts primarily with Medicaid and dual-eligible health plans under value-based arrangements, and became the largest provider of peer recovery supports in Delaware.
Nirvana is a New York-based health tech company that automates insurance eligibility and benefits verification for healthcare providers. Its AI-powered platform - available as the OneVerify web/mobile app or a Coverage API - reads complex insurance plans from hundreds of payers, returns real-time, specialty-specific benefit and cost details, and catches errors that lead to claim denials. Founded in 2019 with a focus on behavioral and mental health, Nirvana now supports more than 100,000 providers and roughly 2 million patient visits a year.
Pelago is a virtual clinic for substance use management, delivering physician-led, evidence-based care for tobacco, alcohol, opioid and other substance use. Founded in 2017 as Quit Genius by three Imperial College London physicians, the company combines cognitive behavioral therapy, medication-assisted treatment and at-home monitoring tools into a program sold to employers, health plans and pharmacy benefit managers. Pelago says it has supported more than 750,000 members and validates its approach with 13 peer-reviewed studies.
Ria Health is a San Francisco-based telehealth company that treats alcohol use disorder entirely online. Founded in 2015 by addiction physician Dr. John Mendelson, it combines FDA-approved anti-craving medications (including naltrexone and The Sinclair Method), recovery coaching, digital progress tracking and a smartphone breathalyzer into a physician-managed program available in all 50 states. Ria treats drinking as a medical condition rather than a moral failing, offering flexible goals from moderation to abstinence, with care reimbursed by major insurers.
Televero Behavioral Health is an Austin, Texas physician-led virtual behavioral health practice that delivers online therapy, psychiatry, medication management, and neurotesting for conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD and autism. Built as a licensed medical practice rather than an app or marketplace, it pairs same-day and same-week access with clinical oversight from MDs, nurse practitioners and licensed counselors, and accepts commercial insurance, Medicare and Medicaid so cost is not a barrier to care.
Amae Health is a Los Angeles-based, psychiatry-led healthcare company building in-person outpatient clinics for people living with severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and treatment-resistant depression. Founded in 2022 by Stas Sokolin and Sonia Garcia, it pairs a wraparound clinical team - psychiatrists, therapists, primary care providers, dietitians, health coaches, peer mentors and social workers - with a data platform built on Palantir Foundry. The company reports a 30-day hospital readmission rate under 4% versus a 23% national average, and raised a $25M Series B in November 2025, bringing total funding to more than $50M.
Shift Health is a San Francisco-based healthtech startup building a Human+AI behavioral care platform that keeps people supported between clinical visits. Its AI coach delivers 24/7, in-the-moment guidance across mental, physical, and behavioral health, while care teams set the protocols, tone, and clinical guardrails. Available as a consumer app ('Shift - AI Mental Health') and as an enterprise platform aimed at health systems, employers, and high-demand professions like first responders and veterans, the company frames good outcomes as coming from 'what happens between visits.'
Arcade Therapeutics is a New York-based digital therapeutics company that builds clinically validated mobile games to treat mental illness. Founded by healthcare entrepreneur Raj Amin and neuroscientist Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, the company embeds a research-backed technique called attention bias modification into engaging games, starting with StarStarter for anxiety. Its lead prescription product, ABM-01, is pursuing FDA submission as one of the first game-based treatments for social anxiety disorder, with a pipeline extending to depression, addiction, and other conditions.
Bluebird Kids Health is a Boston-founded pediatric primary care company delivering value-based, tech-enabled medicine to children in underserved Florida communities. It combines physical and behavioral health under one roof, offers 24/7 access and telehealth, and gets paid to keep kids well rather than per visit. Led by former Landmark Health CEO Chris Johnson, it raised $31.5M in 2025 to expand its network of NCQA-recognized clinics serving roughly 20,000 mostly Medicaid-enrolled patients.
Chronica is a San Diego digital-health company that runs remote patient monitoring (RPM) and chronic care management (CCM) as a managed service. Built on parent company Hifinite Health's hiCare platform, Chronica pairs a cloud-based, HIPAA-compliant software stack with the parts most clinics don't want to build themselves: the connected devices, the in-house clinicians, the call center, and the billing paperwork tied to CMS reimbursement codes. Providers - from outpatient practices to hospitals, ACOs, and home-health agencies - get to extend care beyond the exam room without upfront costs, long contracts, or patient minimums.
Gallus Detox and Recovery Services is a physician-founded medical detoxification and addiction-recovery company that treats withdrawal from opioids, alcohol, benzodiazepines and other drugs in upscale, hotel-like inpatient suites staffed 24/7. Built on the proprietary 'Gallus Method' developed by ER physician Dr. Patrick Gallus in 2011, the company uses IV and injectable medications and cardiac telemetry to make detox safer and more comfortable, and reports that roughly 87% of its patients step directly into aftercare - far above the industry norm. Now led by Chairman and CEO Warren Olsen after a 2019 acquisition by SCB Global Healthcare, Gallus operates inpatient centers in Colorado, Arizona and Texas plus outpatient (IOP) services.
InSite Health is a New Jersey-based behavioral health company building an integrated mental health and wellness platform for K-12 schools, families, colleges, and organizations. Founded in 2022 by Christopher Gaeta, it pairs a software platform with in-person and virtual clinical services - therapy, outpatient psychiatry, medication management, behavioral threat assessments, and school-based screenings - aiming to replace the patchwork of point solutions districts juggle with one holistic, clinically-run program.
Jimini Health is a New York-based behavioral health technology company building clinician-supervised AI for mental health care. Its platform, Sage, is an AI behavioral health assistant that supports patients before, during, and between therapy sessions while keeping licensed clinicians in oversight of every interaction. Founded in 2023 by AI and biotech veterans Luis Voloch, Mark Jacobstein, and Sahil Sud, the company pairs evidence-based practices like CBT with measurement-based care to improve both the effectiveness of and access to therapy. Jimini has raised more than $25M, including a $17M seed round in 2026.
Recover is a San Diego-based, tech-enabled substance use treatment provider that combines medication-assisted treatment with counseling delivered via telehealth. Founded in 2021 by Nick Gulino and a former McKinsey team out of Y Combinator's Winter 2021 batch, the company partners with state and local governments to offer same-day, no-waitlist addiction care - in-network with Medi-Cal and certified by California's Department of Health Care Services - at roughly a tenth of the cost of traditional rehab facilities.
RecoveryLink is a Philadelphia-based digital recovery technology company that gives people in recovery - and the organizations that serve them - a platform for peer-based support at the touch of a button. It combines an electronic recovery record, asynchronous training, one-on-one telerecovery peer sessions, and live video group support into a single HIPAA-compliant suite. Founded by recovery scientist Robert Ashford alongside Chris Hart and Brent Canode, the company treats recovery as an individualized, data-informed process supported by both technology and human connection.

River Health is a Minneapolis digital health company building the first health plan designed specifically for hourly and mixed workforces - the roughly 75 million American workers who earn too much for Medicaid but can't afford traditional insurance. For a flat monthly fee with no copays, deductibles, or hidden charges, members get virtual and in-person primary care, behavioral health, labs, and prescriptions delivered to their door. River sells directly to employers like Taco Bell and Raising Cane's who want to offer real benefits to workers the insurance industry has long ignored.
TrueCare24 is a nationwide health and wellness platform that connects families and employers with vetted, on-demand healthcare providers - at home, on-site, or virtually. Founded in 2016 and backed by 500 Startups, its AI-driven marketplace handles scheduling, provider matching, replacements, payroll and taxes, offering senior home care, behavioral health counseling, on-site flu and COVID-19 vaccination, workplace testing, and telehealth across all 50 states, while cutting the typical cost of care from $25+ an hour to roughly $10-18.
Kintsugi is a Berkeley-based AI company that built voice biomarker technology able to flag signs of clinical depression and anxiety from roughly 20 seconds of free-form speech. Founded in 2019 by Grace Chang and Rima Seiilova-Olson, it sold an API-first platform into call centers, telehealth, and remote patient monitoring before winding down operations in early 2026 and releasing its models, methods, and research into the public domain.
Legion Health is an AI-native psychiatry practice that delivers world-class mental health care covered by insurance. The company automates the administrative work behind clinical care - and became the first to receive regulatory authorization for AI to prescribe psychiatric medications, starting in Utah.
MiSalud Health is a bilingual, AI-powered hybrid healthcare platform built for the Spanish-speaking workforce in the U.S. and Mexico. It pairs same-day virtual consultations in Spanish and English with on-site biometric screenings, mental health support, chronic condition management and nutrition coaching, delivered through employer partnerships that reach over 100,000 members. The company combines culturally tailored care with measurable cost savings, reporting 80% enrollment, 97% satisfaction and 3.5x ROI for its clients.
Trayt Health is a Menlo Park, California company building a patient-centric, clinician-directed software platform that coordinates behavioral and mental health care across primary care, schools, and specialty clinicians. Its platform powers statewide psychiatry access programs and managed care organizations by tracking 750+ symptoms and factors, streamlining consultations and referrals, and turning granular patient data into population-level insights. As of 2026 it supports roughly 20 statewide behavioral health programs across eight U.S. states.